|
AbsntMndedProf -> RE: Revisiting WWI (5/14/2004 4:03:17 AM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: IronDuke
quote:
ORIGINAL: Major Destruction
quote:
ORIGINAL: Drex
I wonder if the conflict in the Middle East and Africa will be represented. the Germans were never really defeated in Africa.
Were they defeated (militarily) anywhere?
The Germans were finished in Europe after their Spring offensives of 1918 were brought to a halt, and were subsequently rolled back to what was known as the Hindenburg line and beyond by Allied troops. The pace of Allied offensive action in WWI was such that defeat came as a slow pushing back rather than some easy to recognise battle of annihilation, but defeat it was as Allied strategy and tactics became more sophisticated. Allied troops never garrisoned much of Germany (bar the Rhineland) because of the armistice, but it was a myth that the German Army was undefeated in the field. In this myth lay the seeds of a lot of future problems. Germans troops returned feted as conquering heroes, and then everyone wondered how such harsh terms as Versailles could be offered to a side that had managed a "draw". Since Germany was largely not garrisoned nor the German army put into POW camps, the trappings of defeat were never in evidence to the public and so the hatred of Versaille began. The armistice came, though, because the German army was on the verge of collapse. Ludendorff offered his resignation as he realised what was about to happen, he was in no doubt.
Regards,
IronDuke
Another underappreciated factor in the end of WW I was the Spanish Flu, which had begun to decemate armies on both sides of the Western front. The conditions that troops lived in contributed to their being suseptible to catching and spreading the flu. Where the Allies could count on untold streams of fresh troops from the New World, Germany stood alone, having thrown her last reinforcements at the allies in the 1918 offensive. Just a point of interest.
Eric Maietta
|
|
|
|
